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The Scourge of the #Red_Notice – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/03/the-scourge-of-the-red-notice-interpol-uae-russia-china

https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/gettyimages-1064039010-e1543854076645.jpg

notez l’appel de une de la newsletter, très explicite :
It’s not just Russia and China that have been accused of misusing Interpol Red Notices

How some countries use Interpol to go after dissidents and debtors.
[…]
Red Notices issued by Interpol’s 194 member states are usually reserved for people suspected of committing serious crimes. But under the UAE’s sharia-influenced legal system, some foreigners who did business there have found themselves on Interpol’s wanted list for business disputes, bounced checks, or even credit card debt—things that in many countries do not carry criminal penalties.

There is no public information about how many Red Notices are issued by the UAE for these relatively minor matters. But one British-based group that helps people in this predicament says it is now seeing at least two cases a month.

Under the UAE’s credit system, customers are often asked to write a check for the value of any bank loan they take, which is then held as a security. If the loan is defaulted on, the bank can then cash the check to recover its money. But because the sum is often high, it’s not unusual for the check to bounce. The Gulf state of Qatar, which has a similar credit system, sentenced British businessman Jonathan Nash to 37 years imprisonment last year for a check that could not be covered. 

“In the UAE, all you have to do is get sick and not be able to pay your mortgage bill,” Estlund said. “What grabs people’s attention about #Interpol Red Notice cases is that it could be you, it could be me.”

#notice_rouge
►https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notice_rouge

How Europe Could Blunt U.S. Iran Sanctions Without Washington Lifting A Finger – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/03/how-europe-can-blunt-u-s-iran-sanctions-without-washington-raising-a-

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It has been nearly seven months since the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. As sanctions begin to bite, Iranian companies are laying off employees, and Iranian households are facing renewed hardships. Iran has exercised remarkable patience while it waits for Europe to devise its #special_purpose_vehicle (#SPV), a new entity intended to help Iran blunt the impact of U.S. secondary sanctions by making it possible for companies to trade with Iran, despite the fact that most international banks refuse to process payments to and from the country.

The SPV will do so by offering a “#compensation” service. By overseeing a ledger of payments related to exports and imports between Europe and Iran, the SPV will be able to coordinate payments so that a European exporter of goods to Iran can get paid by a European importer of goods from Iran, eliminating the need for cross-border transactions. The SPV simply coordinates payments so that exporters can be paid from funds outside of Iran while importers can be paid by funds within Iran.

Compensation is a solution that companies have been using informally for years—the proposed mechanism is feasible. But time is running out to get the SPV up and running. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, recently warned that “the period of patience for our people is getting more limited.”

Europe’s SPV could be launched in the nick of time. France and Germany will likely formally establish the entity in January. But many critics believe the SPV will have a negligible impact on Iran’s economy, not least because it is unlikely that the mechanism will be used to facilitate European purchases of Iranian oil.

Strong Economy Poses Recruitment Challenge for the U.S. Army – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/03/strong-economy-poses-a-recruitment-challenge-for-the-us-army

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The healthy state of the U.S. economy is posing a challenge for the U.S. Army, which is struggling to lure young people away from the hot job market and into military service.

For the first time since the height of the Iraq War 13 years ago, the U.S. Army failed to reach it recruitment goals for the year, falling thousands of troops short of the target. The issue is especially troubling at a time when President Donald Trump is promising to expand the military.
[…]
Foreign Policy: In September, the Army announced that it failed to meet its recruiting goal of 76,500 new recruits for fiscal year 2018 by 8.5 percent. What are you doing to beef up the Army’s recruitment numbers?

[Army Secretary] Mark Esper ]a former defense industry executive]: We missed our numbers last year, but I was proud that we still put quality over quantity. Despite the miss, we actually had the highest retention rates in the last 10 or 11 years, and we recruited more soldiers, 70,000, than we did in that same time period.

#moins_de_chômage_moins_de_recrues …

How an Internet Impostor Exposed the Underbelly of the Czech Media – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/03/how-an-internet-impostor-exposed-the-underbelly-of-the-czech-media

When politicians own the press, trolls have the last laugh.

Tatiana Horakova has an impressive résumé: As head of a Czech medical nonprofit that sends doctors to conflict zones, she negotiated the release of five Bulgarian nurses held by Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, traveled to Colombia with former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to secure a hostage’s freedom from FARC guerrillas, and turned down three nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Not bad for someone who might not even exist.

Horakova has never been photographed. She does not appear to have a medical license. Her nonprofit, which she has claimed employs 200 doctors, appears to be a sham. Her exploits, so far as anyone can tell, are entirely fabricated.

None of this has stopped the press from taking her claims at face value time and again over the course of more than a decade. When it comes to a good story, incredulity is scant and memories run short.

Earlier this year, she again emerged from the shadows, this time to troll Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis—and expose just how easily disinformation can slip into the mainstream press, especially when politicians control it.

In September, the Czech broadsheet Lidove Noviny published an op-ed by Horakova expressing support for Babis’s refusal to offer asylum to 50 Syrian orphans, as was proposed by an opposition member of parliament. Playing up to his populist pledge not to allow “a single refugee” into the Czech Republic, the prime minister said the country had its own orphans to care for.

That crossed the line and provoked widespread criticism. But Horakova’s op-ed seemed to offer a way out: an expert offering the opinion that the orphans would be better off at home in Syria. 

Horakova originally sent the piece to the prime minister’s office, which forwarded it to the paper. A brief Google search would have raised plenty of red flags about the author, but the newspaper leaped without looking.

Lidove Noviny pulled the piece within hours, but not quickly enough to stop several high-profile journalists from quitting. The editors, they complained, could no longer protect the newspaper from its owner—the billionaire prime minister.

Desperate to deflect criticism, Babis’s office appears to have passed the article to the paper without doing due diligence, and the paper took what it was spoon-fed.

The debate over the Syrian orphans had created “a highly charged political moment,” Babis’s spokesperson, Lucie Kubovicova, told Foreign Policy. She said she did not know “who exactly” sent the article to the paper.

#fake_news #medias #presse #république_tchèque